Building a Healthy Employee Culture

Whether purposeful or not, all organizations develop their own “organizational culture.” It is reflected in the feeling you get when you wake up each morning and think about going to work. It’s in the thoughts that run through your mind after meetings. It’s in the tone of those chats you have each day with fellow employees. It’s how you feel and what you observe when you walk through the doors to begin your day. It’s in the way that you and your colleagues celebrate successes, strengths and accomplishments.

One of the most effective ways to build a “healthy” organizational culture is to develop a “Culture Statement” that includes your parent organization’s mission statement, vision and shared values. By creating a culture statement, your in-plant can establish several clear behavioral examples for each of its shared values.

On the list of those values are often words such as truth, integrity and honesty. This is an opportunity to explain precisely what those mean. In doing so, those qualities become measurable. You can assess, for example, whether the organization and its people are exhibiting more honesty or less honesty than they were previously.

Get Employees Involved

Drafting the culture statement is the perfect opportunity for you to solicit the participation of employees. The goal is to establish governing values that are specific and measurable. The top leadership may be establishing the overall direction, but it will be the employees who know whether and how the specifics will be accomplished. Therefore, they should be involved in defining those specifics. They gain a sense of ownership in the process, and the organization gains a more diverse perspective. That way, the culture statement is not just some edict from on high that hangs on the wall, seldom read or even noticed. Instead of rolling their eyes, employees feel a sense of ownership and pride in what it says. After all, these are “shared” values. It is a product of the community, and everyone takes it to heart because it reflects the values of all their hearts.

Once it is drafted, the culture statement can be put to good use in your recruitment and hiring process. To anyone who considers joining the team, the statement will serve as a clear notice of what your organization is all about. Anyone who signs on to work for your organization will be expected to commit to those values and embrace them in all they do.

The culture statement also should be front and center during performance appraisals. Employees can then consider whether what they are doing is getting them and the organization closer to the stated mission, vision and values. Supervisors can thereby use the statement to help keep everyone on track with what they all have agreed is important.

Work/Life Balance

Your organization also will benefit when employees feel that their life outside the workplace matters to their supervisors. In some workplaces, employees are expected to be all business. No personal pictures are allowed in the work area, for example, and personal emails are forbidden. The rationale might be to keep family issues from encroaching on job duties, but the message that the employees get is that the leadership is indifferent or uncaring about their personal lives.

The workplace culture will grow dynamically when you create opportunities to share personal and family accomplishments. The opportunities for interaction are many. Leaders can set up summer barbecues and family health and fitness programs, for example, or other activities that bring employees and their families together. In a healthy culture, people will be having fun. It will be clear that they enjoy being with one another.

One way to know the health of an organization is to listen for the laughter. What is its nature? Does it continue when the supervisor enters the room, or does everybody shut up? Are the employees laughing at the manager or with the manager? Are they mocking the latest initiative or celebrating their mutual accomplishments? The laughter is a litmus test of the quality of the workplace relationships. When an atmosphere of fun prevails, that doesn’t mean less work is getting done. It means you have a vibrant culture in which everyone is in the mood to stick around and do whatever it takes to build for success.

Value What You Believe

In their pursuit of success, leaders must remember and cherish their founding principles. They must not lose sight of why they are here and what their people collectively were assembled to uphold and accomplish. In other words, they must value what they believe. The mission, if it means anything, should not be just words on a poster. It should not be a collection of dictates from the top managers announcing goals and directions and expecting everyone to get on board. The mission is a living, breathing declaration of what the organization represents and why it exists. That mission must be communicated clearly and widely; every employee must know his or her role in fulfilling the greater purpose.

Organizations that have established a clear direction and define their values daily will find it easier to hire and maintain employees who are consistent with those values. If most of your people are on board with the mission and values, then not only will it be easier for them to succeed but it also will be harder for anyone to get away with poor performance, attitudes and behaviors.

It is the job of organizations to create a safe atmosphere where ideas and concerns will flow openly. The leader’s role is to coach. Servant leaders are the catalyst for learning and growth. Their role is to facilitate success for those they have the privilege of supervising and for the organization whose values and mission they endorse.

Unfortunately, too many leaders focus so intently on the numbers that they alienate and hurt their people and thereby hurt themselves. The solution is to focus first on the people, then on productivity. Remember, your No. 1 job as a servant leader is to lead with your heart.